The Crystal Stopper Part 55

"I am very sorry, M. Nicole. Another time..."

"It was the same thing at eight o'clock this morning, when I was waiting for the motor which was bringing Daubrecq to me in his trunk: I had to march up and down the Place de Clichy, so as to prevent the car from stopping outside the door of my place and your men from interfering in my private affairs. Otherwise, once again, Gilbert and Clarisse Mergy would have been lost."

"But," said Prasville, "those painful events, it seems to me, are only delayed for a day, two days, three days at most. To avert them for good and all we should want..."

"The real list, I suppose?"

"Exactly. And I daresay you haven't got it."

"Yes, I have."

"The genuine list?"

"The genuine, the undoubtedly genuine list."

"With the cross of Lorraine?"

"With the cross of Lorraine."

Prasville was silent. He was labouring under violent emotion, now that the duel was commencing with that adversary of whose terrifying superiority he was well aware; and he shuddered at the idea that a.r.s.ene Lupin, the formidable a.r.s.ene Lupin, was there, in front of him, calm and placid, pursuing his aims with as much coolness as though he had all the weapons in his hands and were face to face with a disarmed enemy.

Not yet daring to deliver a frontal attack, feeling almost intimidated, Prasville said:

"So Daubrecq gave it up to you?"

"Daubrecq gives nothing up. I took it."

"By main force, therefore?"

"Oh, dear, no!" said M. Nicole, laughing. "Of course, I was ready to go to all lengths; and, when that worthy Daubrecq was dug out of the basket in which he had been travelling express, with an occasional dose of chloroform to keep his strength up, I had prepared things so that the fun might begin at once. Oh, no useless tortures... no vain sufferings!

No... Death, simply... You press the point of a long needle on the chest, where the heart is, and insert it gradually, softly and gently.

That's all but the point would have been driven by Mme. Mergy. You understand: a mother is pitiless, a mother whose son is about to die!...

'Speak, Daubrecq, or I'll go deeper.... You won't speak?... Then I'll push another quarter of an inch... and another still.' And the patient's heart stops beating, the heart that feels the needle coming... And another quarter of an inch... and one more... I swear before Heaven that the villain would have spoken!... We leant over him and waited for him to wake, trembling with impatience, so urgent was our hurry... Can't you picture the scene, monsieur le secretaire-general? The scoundrel lying on a sofa, well bound, bare-chested, making efforts to throw off the fumes of chloroform that dazed him. He breathes quicker... He gasps...

He recovers consciousness...his lips move.... Already, Clarisse Mergy whispers, 'It's I... it's I, Clarisse... Will you answer, you wretch?'

She has put her finger on Daubrecq's chest, at the spot where the heart stirs like a little animal hidden under the skin. But she says to me, 'His eyes... his eyes... I can't see them under the spectacles... I want to see them... 'And I also want to see those eyes which I do not know, I want to see their anguish and I want to read in them, before I hear a word, the secret which is about to burst from the inmost recesses of the terrified body. I want to see. I long to see. The action which I am about to accomplish excites me beyond measure. It seems to me that, when I have seen the eyes, the veil will be rent asunder. I shall know things. It is a presentiment. It is the profound intuition of the truth that keeps me on tenterhooks. The eye-gla.s.ses are gone. But the thick opaque spectacles are there still. And I s.n.a.t.c.h them off, suddenly. And, suddenly, startled by a disconcerting vision, dazzled by the quick light that breaks in upon me and laughing, oh, but laughing fit to break my jaws, with my thumb--do you understand? with my thumb--hop, I force out the left eye!"

M. Nicole was really laughing, as he said, fit to break his jaws. And he was no longer the timid little unctuous and obsequious provincial usher, but a well-set-up fellow, who, after reciting and mimicking the whole scene with impressive ardour, was now laughing with a shrill laughter the sound of which made Prasville's flesh creep:

"Hop! Jump, Marquis! Out of your kennel, Towzer! What's the use of two eyes? It's one more than you want. Hop! I say, Clarisse, look at it rolling over the carpet! Mind Daubrecq's eye! Be careful with the grate!"

M. Nicole, who had risen and pretended to be hunting after something across the room, now sat down again, took from his pocket a thing shaped like a marble, rolled it in the hollow of his hand, chucked it in the air, like a ball, put it back in his fob and said, coolly:

"Daubrecq's left eye."

Prasville was utterly bewildered. What was his strange visitor driving at? What did all this story mean? Pale with excitement, he said:

"Explain yourself."

"But it's all explained, it seems to me. And it fits in so well with things as they were, fits in with all the conjectures which I had been making in spite of myself and which would inevitably have led to my solving the mystery, if that d.a.m.ned Daubrecq had not so cleverly sent me astray! Yes, think, follow the trend of my suppositions: 'As the list is not to be discovered away from Daubrecq,' I said to myself, 'it cannot exist away from Daubrecq. And, as it is not to be discovered in the clothes he wears, it must be hidden deeper still, in himself, to speak plainly, in his flesh, under his skin..."

"In his eye, perhaps?" suggested Prasville, by way of a joke...

"In his eye? Monsieur le secretaire-general, you have said the word."

"What?"

"I repeat, in his eye. And it is a truth that ought to have occurred to my mind logically, instead of being revealed to me by accident. And I will tell you why. Daubrecq knew that Clarisse had seen a letter from him instructing an English manufacturer to 'empty the crystal within, so as to leave a void which it was unpossible to suspect.' Daubrecq was bound, in prudence, to divert any attempt at search. And it was for this reason that he had a crystal stopper made, 'emptied within,' after a model supplied by himself. And it is this crystal stopper which you and I have been after for months; and it is this crystal stopper which I dug out of a packet of tobacco. Whereas all I had to do..."

"Was what?" asked Prasville, greatly puzzled.

M. Nicole burst into a fresh fit of laughter:

"Was simply to go for Daubrecq's eye, that eye 'emptied within so as to leave a void which it is impossible to suspect,' the eye which you see before you."

And M. Nicole once more took the thing from his pocket and rapped the table with it, producing the sound of a hard body with each rap.

Prasville whispered, in astonishment:

"A gla.s.s eye!"

"Why, of course!" cried M. Nicole, laughing gaily. "A gla.s.s eye! A common or garden decanter-stopper, which the rascal stuck into his eyesocket in the place of an eye which he had lost--a decanter-stopper, or, if you prefer, a crystal stopper, but the real one, this time, which he faked, which he hid behind the double bulwark of his spectacles and eye-gla.s.ses, which contained and still contains the talisman that enabled Daubrecq to work as he pleased in safety."

Prasville lowered his head and put his hand to his forehead to hide his flushed face: he was almost possessing the list of the Twenty-seven. It lay before him, on the table.

Mastering his emotion, he said, in a casual tone:

"So it is there still?"

"At least, I suppose so," declared M. Nicole.

"What! You suppose so?"

"I have not opened the hiding-place. I thought, monsieur le secretaire-general, I would reserve that honour for you."

Prasville put out his hand, took the thing up and inspected it. It was a block of crystal, imitating nature to perfection, with all the details of the eyeball, the iris, the pupil, the cornea.

He at once saw a movable part at the back, which slid in a groove. He pushed it. The eye was hollow.

There was a tiny ball of paper inside. He unfolded it, smoothed it out and, quickly, without delaying to make a preliminary examination of the names, the hand-writing or the signatures, he raised his arms and turned the paper to the light from the windows.

"Is the cross of Lorraine there?" asked M. Nicole.

"Yes, it is there," replied Prasville. "This is the genuine list."

He hesitated a few seconds and remained with his arms raised, while reflecting what he would do. Then he folded up the paper again, replaced it in its little crystal sheath and put the whole thing in his pocket.

M. Nicole, who was looking at him, asked:

"Are you convinced?"